Law Life: Android apps for lawyers

By Stephanie

Detroit Legal News

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Nicole Black, The Daily Record Newswire

If you’re a lawyer who loves Android devices but haven’t yet figured out which apps will help you in your law practice, you’re in luck. What follows are some great Android apps that will help you to stay on top of your law practice no matter where you are.

And before I start, I’d like to extend my thanks to Rochester, N.Y., attorney Steven Feder, an avid Android user, for sharing his favorite list of Android apps from a recent presentation that he gave on this very topic. His list was a wonderful resource and helped me tremendously in drafting this article.

First, let’s focus on the substantive legal apps developed for lawyers using Android devices.

For conducting free legal research on the fly, look no further than the Fastcase app. Another great resource is dLaw, which provides free access to federal statutes and rules along with access to Google Scholar’s legal research capabilities, and also offers paid access to various state statutes and rules.

For a functional legal dictionary, there’s LawGuide. Another great resource is the New York State Bar Association’s ethics app, which provides full, searchable access to all New York ethics opinions.For specific practice area tools, there’s Karl’s Mortgage, a mortgage amortization app and QuickTax, an app that is chock full of tax-related information.

Picture it Settled is an app that is currently free, although that may start charging an access fee down the road. This app aids in settlement negotiations by using predictive analytics — including vast amounts of settlement data — to assist lawyers during negotiations.

And of course, there are apps devoted to legislative and Supreme Court topics, including We the People (the full text of the U.S. Constitution), Congress (everything you ever wanted to know about Congress and pending bills), and PocketJustice (everything you ever wanted to know about the U.S. Supreme Court).

If a mobile office is what you seek, the following apps will help you achieve that goal. First, there’s Documents to Go, which is a great, albeit somewhat pricey ($24.95), word processing app that allows you to create Word documents.

Next, ScanToPDF is a really handy app that turns your Android device into a scanner. EFax is a mobile fax app that is a really useful tool, but you have to sign up for their eFax service in order to use it. Finally, there’s SignEasy, an app makes it easy to sign a document using your finger or of stylus and then share the executed document via email.

And last but not least, a few apps that turn your Android device into a personal assistant. First there’s SpeakToIt, an app that allows you to speak to your phone in order to obtain all sorts of information and also performs tasks and notifies you of important events. And, finally, DictaDroid ($1.99) is a dictation app that transforms speech into text.

So there you have it. A great list of Android apps for the mobile 21st century lawyer. Download a few and see how much you can get done using just your Android device.

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Nicole Black is a director at MyCase.com, a cloud-based law practice management platform. She speaks regularly at conferences regarding the intersection of law and technology. She publishes three legal blogs and can be reached at niki@mycase.com.